Shifts
by 20th Century King
Summary: The first time he awakens changed, it's 1803 and the Louisiana territory has just become his. Alfred's appearance has a nasty habit of shifting at random intervals over the years. Specifically, to darker-colored shades.


**Note that this is a kink meme de-anon. The prompt was for America periodically switching to his 2P colors from time to time.**

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The first time he awakens changed, it's 1803 and the Louisiana territory has just become his.

It isn't evident at first—his skin doesn't grow darker, and his eyes remain endless pools of sky blue. Yet, when he further glances up the mirror, dark hair is what greets him instead of his usual golden blond.

It agitates him, and for understandable reasons. Hair does not simply change color overnight, and the contrast is noticeable from locks that should have been bright and yellow, not rich and dark like the chocolate he's heard grows in the lands south of him.

When he hears knocking on the door, he turns his sights away from the mirror momentarily, and when they fall upon the glass once more he finds wheat-colored strands have once again returned to grace his locks. He dismisses the earlier occurrence as a vision brought by exhaustion and nothing more, and works to return to business.

The next time his appearance changes, he's successfully cut Mexico in half.

This time, the change is more noticeable. His hair has darkened like previously, rich dark chocolate replacing amber waves, yet at the same time his skin tone has taken a noticeably darker color by a few shades. Only his eyes remain unchanged, blue like the ocean that rests at an endless expanse beyond the edge of the frontier.

It lasts longer, dragging on to half the day, and he takes precaution not to make his way outdoors and be chanced upon by men who aren't too pleased at having to share land with these darker-skinned non-Anglo's. It's not as if he doesn't understand this sentiment; they are the inferior after all, much like the ebony-skinned men and women working in his south, or the red-toned 'savages' that just seem to be everywhere he looks. It confuses him, startles him in fact, that his appearance suddenly decided to make a shift and reflect these lesser races that he simply does not consider as his own— for he represents the American people, and the American people are a white people, and he most certainly does not bear the appearance of one at present.

Hours pass before he notices his skin taking on its formerly lighter tone and his hair its usual lustrous blond. Alfred doesn't expect it to happen again after that.

The states have always been different, and this was a fact. But the differences between the northern states and the southern states have brought differences, spiraling into a multitude of arguments that all have one direct root—slavery. By 1861, the first shot is fired at Fort Sumter, and the United States breaks apart at its seams.

When the Emancipation Proclamation is signed, he condemns the south for its slavery and plantation institutions, meanwhile smoking rolls of tobacco he knows were harvested by black hands. The south is being stubborn, refusing to falter in a war he's certain it's destined to lose, and the Proclamation is meant to drive a nail further down the coffin. Never mind the slaves that still existed within the northern boundaries—the point is that they're rid from in the south, because the south is the villain, and its slaves have a right to defect against the villain so long as it loses its morale in the process.

He doesn't notice his skin taking on a noticeably darker tone until he gives a fraction of a glance upon his reflection on the windowpane.

By this point, he isn't certain of what to do, or what is causing the changes in the first place. His skin is somewhat darker from last time, far from being close to being likened to black, yet impossible to associate with one who is white. It causes the sudden change causes him to yelp in surprise, and he has to work to lock the door to prevent the guard outside from peeking in to see if he's alright. He gives nervous reassurances that he's fine, that he merely caught sight of a ghastly creature outside the window, and it had merely been his imagination and nothing more. The door doesn't loosen open until midnight strikes, signaling the end of the first day of the New Year, and when it widens it reveals a white-skinned blond-haired boy who looks exasperated, confused, but nevertheless relieved.

These shifts, as he now labels them, occur again and again as the years roll on—when he is it at war with Spain, and talks of spreading democracy and enlightenment and finds his complexion steadily growing darker as he steps into his newly annexed territory in Hawaii, or peeks into his ceded war claims upon victory. In 1910 they start to happen more periodically, as migrations within him tilt and shape new demographics within his areas, and he tries very hard to catch up and maintain white supremacy in his appearance, as he does with everything else. It's when Europeans step in—as they always do, though this time as immigrants looking for new beginnings—that these shifts suddenly lessen. He isn't too fond of thinking of these Slavic visitors or Germanic job seekers or Italian settlers as his own completely, but he prefers them over the darker-skinned populace that still dot his maps in various places.

At the same time, he's grown to dislike them somewhat less—the images of men hanging by the ropes tied to trees, hanging like strange fruit rotting in the summery south, twist his insides at the sheer disgust and horror they present. Yet even as he finds his sympathies heading out towards them, he keeps his head turned away, his eyes averted from the tragedies below him.

And all the while Alfred questions why. Why these shifts happen in the first place, why he doesn't see Matthew dealing with hair suddenly shifting to darker shades or wakes up with a different complexion. Why his ebony-skinned population—because they're his, he's growing to realize—keeps getting harmed, or why he keeps pushing Asians that want to be his further west even when they have nowhere else to go, or why he's so afraid of having more people come in to make his nation bigger that he has to set up acts against it. But what he questions most of all is why he is so ashamed of it in the first place. He's always known the American people to be a white people, yet words written from a document that established his beginnings—"all men are created equal"—repeat in his mind whenever he starts contemplating the nature of his shifts. The words had, admittedly, meant something different then, but don't languages and meanings have a tendency to shift over time?

He doesn't even beg to question when he's started looking upon these inferiors as men—for weren't they always, to begin with?

Internment camps and two bomb drops later, he finds his black population tired of mistreatment, tired of being looked down upon, tired of being kicked down as inferiors. They are tired of their association with Jim Crow, and long for change. When 1964 happens, he doesn't even pay mind to the shifts happening within his body—he's too distracted by a sense of a relief that finally, change is coming to another part of him that's waited for it for a long time. There's still a long way to go, but he figures, if this can happen, then what else?

And it keeps happening, these shifts, as Cubans come in to escape revolution from their old homeland, as Chinese and Koreans boom in his cities, as Latin Americans find their way to step into the country, legally or otherwise. They come in, they settle, and they boom, skyrocketing in maps and demographics and further tilting the balance between whites and those of another color and race. Sometimes he hates them, or is afraid of them, or looks at them disparagingly wondering what right they had to be here in the first place. Yet most of the time he loves them as he loves the rest of him, because they choose to associate with him, desire to be part of his melting pot that continues to brew each day, changing and molding with each passing day.

Predominantly, the American people are a white people—but he finds they are not just white, but black and brown and olive and many other colors he can't seem to place. There is still a hesitance at times, especially when he looks upon natives that don't wish to associate with him for reasons he won't admit but knows too well of, or when he looks at Middle Easterners and feels strange twists in the pit of his stomach of a fear he knows, deep down, to be rather exclusive and judging. Because as long as they wish to call themselves American, as long as they show their loyalty to him, then it shouldn't matter too much, should it? It is, at base, simply just an idea—and it shouldn't matter if it might not have been that way a century or two ago. Definitions change, have always had a habit of changing over time.

Some day the shifts will stop, when the majority is no longer the majority, and the minority is no longer the minority. Will he be fair, with blond hair and pink skin? Or will he perhaps be darker in complexion, with locks like chocolate and skin shining like bronze? Or perhaps both? He doesn't know, but he isn't too worried either—when it happens, it happens, and he will look forward to it with his head held high.

Because really, why be ashamed of being all that he is?


End file.
